Road to Mastery: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Chapter 559: Jack vs. God

Enas’s face turned furious. Green aura emanated in waves, his S-Grade power finally fully activating. “I don’t know how you got so strong,” he said, “but you’re delusional if you think you can defeat me.”

Jack smiled. A torrent of purple and gold erupted from under his feet, making his magic trunks flap lightly, the two colors merging in the air like lightning strikes. Under the light, his eyes were sharp and confident. The pressure of merely releasing his aura was so strong that the distant cultivators turned wobbly, almost losing their ability to fly. The weaker ones vomited, but it did nothing to curb their enthusiasm.

Their eyes were full of hope. “Go, Jack Rust!” they screamed until their throats tore. “Save us!!!”

Spacetime between the two fighters wavered, shimmering like hot air. Their auras clashed, green against gold and purple, creating a river of power which spread to the left and right, stretching far enough to be visible from some nearby galaxies. Reality was already flaking. Withstanding this clash of auras was already straining it, so the actual battle might well break the universe.

Jack glanced at the gathering cultivators in the distance. They weren’t nearly far away. “Let’s take this elsewhere,” he said.

“Hah!” Enas laughed. “You think I care about—”

Jack raised a hand and jabbed space. It shattered for several light years around them. The universe crumbled around him and Enas, leaving them in a sea of swimming colors where they had nothing to break.

Enas looked around warily.

“Don’t think of going back,” Jack said. “Opening a portal to the universe would take long enough for me to stop you.”

Enas finally rested his gaze on Jack. “You also can’t go back,” he said. “You really want to kill me or die trying.”

Jack smiled. “When did you ever doubt it?”

***

As this tremendous power surged through Jack, forcibly pushing him to the S-Grade, he’d seen the path clearly.

The S-Grade was a completely new realm compared to everything before it. The breakthrough to reach it would be incredibly difficult, and the increase in power was vast to the point where even Archons were ants before a true S-Grade. That was why Enas had been able to so easily overpower the entire army. He simply existed at a higher level. He was transcendent. Mere cultivators could do nothing against him, be they F-Grades or Archons.

To reach the S-Grade was to raise the self to the level of a true universe. It was incomparable to an inner world, which was a tiny, mock universe. This was a true one, containing galaxies, heavenly Daos, and sprawling civilizations. Jack had only reached this level temporarily by combining his seed of transcendence—the Universe of the Body—with a tremendous influx of energy. He’d revert to his normal level when this was over, but he knew he’d return here in the future. He’d achieve it the right way. It was only a matter of time.

Since being S-Grade meant being a complete universe, the actual universe itself could technically be an S-Grade cultivator, though Jack doubted it was so. If it was sentient, it would have interfered by now. That did bring interesting questions to the fore, however—could the universe be the corpse of a dead S-Grade cultivator, with the twelve gods being remnants of their will? Could there be more worlds out there, or S-Grade beings traversing the infinite dimensional sea in search of new places to conquer? Was it a whole new frontier, or just an empty infinity?

Jack didn’t know, but now was not the time to consider these things.

His own Universe of the Body was a real universe. It was newborn, far too weak to attain the S-Grade by itself, but it contained the seeds to that path. That was how he’d been able to absorb and utilize all the power Brock gave him. They used extreme amounts of energy to simulate a more active universe, letting Jack command power at the S-Grade. In fact, the energy he’d been given was so much he could only partly utilize it. Even at the S-Grade level of power, he could fight for a long time.

Those were all inconsequential. Jack gathered his powers into his body, focusing on the only real opponent—Enas.

“Black Hole!” he shouted. His fist crumbled, replaced by a swirling black orb. With his laws and power risen to new heights, this was no longer an imitation but the real thing. If shot into a universe, it would absorb matter and keep growing forever. He pushed it forward. Enas brought his hands together, wrestling control of the nearby universe and enforcing his own Dao of Entropy over the black hole, destabilizing it and forcing it to disappear.

“I have absorbed Axelor, boy!” Enas laughed. “You cannot use his tricks on me!”

“Fuck off,” Jack said. A swarm of black holes appeared around him, orbiting his head before flying at Enas. The God brought his palms together again, combining them in esoteric seals which changed the Dao. Entropy formed precise counters which rushed at each black hole and neutralized it.

Enas possessed all the Daos of his siblings, it was just that he favored Life.

Jack mixed in a punch. It met Enas’s forearm, blocked, while the shockwave destroyed half the universe behind them. Enas struck back, his hand formed into a claw. Jack parried. They each launched into a flurry of blows, two titans clashing physically. The world around them was peeled away by the violence. Jack’s inner universe faced apocalypse. Planets were ruptured every time his organs took damage, and the sky above their heads was torn apart as his skin broke. Intense energy currents rushed everywhere, obliterating anything in their path. Jack felt the loss. These were living creatures he’d birthed—in a way, they were his children—but they would suffer every time he took losses. Every fight meant their sacrifice.

This was the responsibility of a God.

His creatures died by the thousands each time he clashed, entire planets scoured of life, their development pushed back to the single-celled age. He split off a tiny part of his power to protect the cultivators of his inner world, but that was all he could afford. The grief fueled his resolve to win.

Their clashes were cataclysmic, and they were not ineffective. Jack was seemingly winning. His every punch drilled into the God’s defenses, pushing him back, inflicting minor wounds. In return, subtle undercurrents of malevolent life energy entered Jack’s body. They didn’t cause any immediate changes, but Jack was no amateur—he kept his perception on the look-out, and before long, he noticed something. His face went white.

“Fool!” Enas cried out. “You dare engage in a melee with me? Watch as I destroy you from the inside!”

Jack’s organs had turned into planets, but they also remained organs. They were made of his cells and were part of his body. Now, he could sense malevolent tumors growing rapidly inside him, expanding and conquering him.

“You gave me cancer?” he asked incredulously.

“That’s right! The overwhelming, uncontrolled power of life! Now die!”

Enas pressed the attack, not giving Jack the time to deal with his inner problems. Jack snorted. Even as he fell on the back foot, his perception drilled deep into his body, reaching every good and bad cell. He saw their inner workings clearly. Then, he quickly purged the tumors, letting healthy cells regrow in their place. He couldn’t do it very accurately, given the chaotic battle, so he ended up using more energy than required.

It was a constant balancing act. As they clashed, more energy sipped into Jack’s body, and more tumors appeared, which he had to purge before they expanded too much. That process demanded part of his attention, hindering his fighting and letting Enas take the upper hand.

The Sage had always fought from the back, at least in Jack’s knowledge. Enas, on the other hand, was a fierce pugilist. His dirty robes fluttered as he landed strike after strike on Jack, slowly boxing him in. Knees and elbows and fists rained alongside insidious blows. Jack dodged the fingers heading for his eyes and smashed aside a fist, then ducked under a wide blow only to be met with a knee to the face. He jerked back, but Enas was already there, smashing a palm into the small of his back and dislocating his spine. Jack willed it to reattach but suffered a kick to the back of the head for doing so. He flew away, the world spinning around him.

In that moment of weakness, another insidious power took hold of his body. Jack sensed the power of life infiltrating him, fusing into his own to push it in a certain direction. Still recoiling, he didn’t manage to stop it. His body started evolving in terrible ways. His organs were failing, his limbs twisting, his brain breaking. Ugly protrusions grew out of his skin, while his bones turned spongy. He was killing himself.

“Fear the power of life and evolution!” Enas shouted, green rivers emerging from him and diving into Jack’s body. “You’re already dead!”